• The Peruvian Purple Potato Teachings
• Hot Flashing through Death Valley
Are you busy?
I’m busy
In fact, I’m so goddamn busy
it’s a miracle I found the time
to come down here and
tell you all about just how busy I am
and have been ever since I hit college
and discovered a whole world
ripe for salvation— by me!
Everything from nuclear proliferation to the rainforest
to the tyranny of cellulite
required my personal attention
God must have known I’d be so busy and not blessed me with children
Where could
Having suffered a series of calamities
so long and varied as to comprise a statistical impossibility
I cling to the tenuous hope that
surely
my life cannot get worse
then my computer crashes
and I am plunged headlong into a canyon of despair
deep and unfathomable as string theory
landing with an inelegant splat, I am an upended bug
flailing fruitlessly and beset
by larger insects who gnaw greedily on my exposed viscera
there is no point trying to resurrect this heap
rogue elements in my brain disagree
they concoct an army of lively
drum-beating, cymbal clashing, sword wielding
thoughts
cruel thoughts in crimson
by Lisa Martinovic
So here I am gawking at this brand new, beefed-up
and all full of itself Harley-Davidson
Big
Black
Menacing
A veritable Rottweiler of the motorcycle world
I walk the length of this behemoth
admiring its sheer bulk
its shiny newness
Then I spy the sticker
applied somewhere above the headlight
centered just so, the sticker sneers:
If it’s too loud
You’re too old
Read more…
OK, so you’re in this new writer’s group
for years you’ve been avoiding them
like a plague of phone solicitors at dinnertime
but all your friends are going
and if you don’t get with it
before long they’ll all have Pulitzers
while you’re enjoying life as a jingle writer for local used car commercials
OK, so you’re at this new writer’s group
even though you fear them with the fear of the damned
because you’re so utterly naked
you and your purported art
and being thus exposed
there’s a sporting chance you’ll be revealed—instantly!
to have all the creative talent of a
My name is Nila Marse
I may be older’n dirt and twice as ugly
But I ain’t never owed nobody nothin’
‘at’s right, I been worked like a mule all my life
bustin’ my ass and payin’ dues to where I’m bled drier than a salt box
I raised eight brothers and sisters with no mama
and a no ‘count daddy
Hell, he was worse than no daddy at all
I been workin’ thirty years at the chicken plant
my fingers all hobbled up
my lungs so full of dust from ground up chicken bones
every time I cough, feathers fly outta